Grafitti Hitachi – mixing greys

Grafitti Hitachi – Acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches. K. Krimmel

Welcome to my fourth image in the Construction series. I must say that the creation of this brainchild was a difficult birth.

I already complained about my frustration with acrylics, so won’t continue on whining about that. I’ll just mention that working with grey colours is both a delight and a frustration for an artist. Anyone who can handle them well has his colour mixing down pat.

The problem with greys is that the are so influenced by the colours next to them. If you put a neutral grey beside blue, it will take on an orange cast. Conversely if you put a neutral grey beside an orange, the grey will take on a blue colour. They pick up the opposite tinge from the colour wheel.

You really need to test the grey beside the neighbouring colour in order to understand what still needs to be added so that the colour will “sit right” beside it. “Read properly?” I’m not sure how to describe that. You might test it to see what I mean.

In this painting, I like how the orange machinery draws you into the picture plane, right across the whole thing and then dips down almost to the bottom with a bit of a curve inwards so that you can start looking at the rest of the picture. I am quite happy about what happened with the grey wall, the shotcrete (a concrete product that is sprayed on to a wall that has been excavated for construction) and with the various bits of mechanical shovel and rebar. I also like the contrasted formality of the machinery and the randomness of the grafitti on the wall behind that frames the Hitachi machine.